I was so interested—­I dare not say amused—­that I stared in silence while she paused a moment, afraid that she would draw rein and end the fairy tale too soon.

“The beliefs of this man, of his Society rather, vigorously thought and therefore vigorously given out here, will put the whole place straight.  It will act as a solvent.  These vitriolic layers actively denied, will fuse and disappear in the stream of gentle, tolerant sympathy which is love.  For each member, worthy of the name, loves the world, and all creeds go into the melting-pot; Mabel, too, if she joins them out of real conviction, will find salvation—­”

“Thinking, I know, is of the first importance,” I objected, “but don’t you, perhaps, exaggerate the power of feeling and emotion which in religion are au fond always hysterical?”

“What is the world,” she told me, “but thinking and feeling?  An individual’s world is entirely what that individual thinks and believes —­interpretation.  There is no other.  And unless he really thinks and really believes, he has no permanent world at all.  I grant that few people think, and still fewer believe, and that most take ready-made suits and make them do.  Only the strong make their own things; the lesser fry, Mabel among them, are merely swept up into what has been manufactured for them.  They get along somehow.  You and I have made for ourselves, Mabel has not.  She is a nonentity, and when her belief is taken from her, she goes with it.”

It was not in me just then to criticize the evasion, or pick out the sophistry from the truth.  I merely waited for her to continue.

“None of us have Truth, my dear Frances,” I ventured presently, seeing that she kept silent.

“Precisely,” she answered, “but most of us have beliefs.  And what one believes and thinks affects the world at large.  Consider the legacy of hatred and cruelty involved in the doctrines men have built into their creeds where the sine qua non of salvation is absolute acceptance of one particular set of views or else perishing everlastingly—­for only by repudiating history can they disavow it—­”

“You’re not quite accurate,” I put in.  “Not all the creeds teach damnation, do they?  Franklyn did, of course, but the others are a bit modernized now surely?”

“Trying to get out of it,” she admitted, “perhaps they are, but damnation of unbelievers—­of most of the world, that is—­is their rather favorite idea if you talk with them.”

“I never have.”

She smiled.  “But I have,” she said significantly, “so, if you consider what the various occupants of this house have so strongly held and thought and believed, you need not be surprised that the influence they have left behind them should be a dark and dreadful legacy.  For thought, you know, does leave—­”

The opening of the door, to my great relief, interrupted her, as the Grenadier led in the visitor to see the room.  He bowed to both of us with a brief word of apology, looked round him, and withdrew, and with his departure the conversation between us came naturally to an end.  I followed him out.  Neither of us in any case, I think, cared to argue further.